Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/media-tools/page/6/)
Are the artist and their art so inextricably connected that support of one means support of the other? Many would say yes, and find Orson Scott Card’s blatant homophobia as grounds to boycott Ender’s Game.
Consumerism is the religion of the masses. How do we overcome the attraction of pretty colors, alluring products and never ending commercials appealing to our lowest cravings so we can make wise purchasing decisions and is there anything we can do about marketing tactics?
After receiving a GQ award from Hugo Boss, Russell Brand spoke out against the company honoring him and mentioned their history of utilizing Jews for forced labor in the creation of Nazi uniforms. Brand was reprimanded via social media, bringing to question the power we have to criticize those who run things.
Elysium is the latest in a series of American productions that show how the Information Age has become the Age of Appropriation, one in which ideas and stories exist side by side for the borrowing, the taking, and ultimately, the mixing. What it also shows is that after almost a century of imitating the West, the tables are indeed turning and Hollywood is increasingly looking east.
It is stunning to realize how dismal “normal” ways of interacting are within broadcast news media – if the goal is to cultivate a meaningful and mutually respectful dialogue. Quite simply, listening and responding isn’t the media’s goal. Instead, the participants are collecting ammunition so that, as soon as the other person stops talking – or sooner, since interruptions are chronic – they can fire back, reiterating why they are right and he or she is wrong. What would happen if CNN, CBS, and other news outlets took meaningful steps to buck the system? Here are a few possibilities.
Taien Ng-Chan is a writer and multidisciplinary artist living in Montréal, Québec. Her work as an artist and scholar has taken her into territory that challenges how governments, institutions and societies ought to be.
That’s not to say the morality-play theory of Krugman and Conn is irrelevant. On the contrary, it fits into the pattern of conservative fears quite easily. If every new experience that brings pleasure is bound to be followed by pain; if every burst of excess is bound to provoke punishment; if the only way to avoid punishment and pain is a limited, constricted life of constant self-denial; then the world must indeed look like a dangerous place, full of pitfalls everywhere, with every step a risk that wise people will surely avoid. That’s the kind of world the myth of homeland insecurity gives us.
Calderone’s move to ask McChrystal for comment so soon after Hastings’ death immediately struck me as mildly inappropriate, given the former general’s connection to Hastings. More than that, however, it struck me as something – a comment from McChrystal – that would have virtually no journalistic value or significance.
In continuation of my series on First Amendment rights as they impact religious minority groups, I address current controversy over social media posts maligning religious groups. My previous post in this series entitled Does Freedom of Speech Allow Stereotyping discussed a greeting card that stereotyped Muslims as terrorists in an unusually offensive and glaringly inaccurate way. This week I have chosen another unfortunate event, a Facebook post that ignited debate over the possible classification of certain types of content as threats instead of free speech. Tennessee County Commissioner Barry West posted a picture on his Facebook page showing a cowboy aiming a shotgun at the camera with the caption “How to Wink at a Muslim”. My personal feelings of disgust aside, the post once again shows a classic example of stereotyping, this time through social media, which is so much more viral than a greeting card.
The cynic observer can’t help but wonder: If self immolation no longer works as an agent for change, then is it still worth the price?
At its most profound the act stands as the highest form of human compassion, a confirmation of life by giving up one’s own. At its most incoherent self-immolation becomes more expressive of the frustration of the powerless. The individual, enamored by death, possessed by anger, elicits neither horror nor pity but cynicism. After all, to burn with passion is very much different than to be consumed by rage.